Best Live Act: Scotland’s Incomparable YOUNG FATHERS

There’s just something so good – SO GOOD! HANDS WAVING ABOUT KINDA GOOD! – about that gritty hip-hop thing that Edinburgh’s Young Fathers do. That Blackalicious sound, that slip and slide and rapping and rolling on stuff like “War” and “Rumbling”. There’s also something good about that TV on the Radio indie stuff that Young Fathers do – percussive, double drums and rhythms like in “Shame”. There’s their “Old Rock and Roll” and mellow soul. Yeah, “I heard” it, and it was good.

But there’s something so GREAT – like truly GREAT BEST SHOW EVER KINDA GREAT – about seeing that glitchy, magnificent combination live, all rolled up into a hit that smacks you in the face, while Kayus Bankole is singing directly into it. Get up and have a party! Come here and do the right thing!

YUSSSSSSSS.

Right now there’s nobody, seriously nobody, live who blends so many ace styles with so much style as Young Fathers. Alloysious Massaquoi’s stellar voice, G Hastings’ plaintive rhymes and the wall-bouncing mania of Kayus Bankole all net out at…awesome. If you’re at all confused or meh about the albums (the latest of which, Dead, won them the Mercury Music Prize in the UK), I get it, but I still implore you to check them out. On stage, it all falls into a beautiful, wonderful, place that you really need to visit sometime. \m/